


monachopsis

by vounoura



Series: knife wife and staff loser [9]
Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls Online
Genre: F/F, Fluff, I'm pretty sure. Bugsmoke is the TES equivalent of weed so GHFJSHFJS, Pining, Recreational Drug Use, Romance, Smoking, aka 'that one fic where Naryu stares at her not-girlfriend for like 5 minutes straight', will I ever write established relationship stuff? no. only idiotic pining for these idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-28 12:30:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16723440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vounoura/pseuds/vounoura
Summary: She really shouldn't be staring, but she does it anyway.





	monachopsis

She really shouldn't be staring, but she does it anyway. Naryu's been caught staring so many times at Nirasa that it no longer bothers either of them - Nirasa would only raise one eyebrow once she noticed, the corner of her lip twitching upwards, and then Naryu would roll her eyes before she could open her mouth and the moment would be over. Naryu would return to whatever she was doing and life would go on as normal.

It should be easy - Naryu does this little dance with everyone, or at least she tells herself she does, and she really should look away from Nirasa now but she doesn't. Or maybe she finds that she can't, but it would be _weak_ and _vulnerable_ to admit to that so she doesn't. She shoves that little thought away into a dark place in her mind where she doesn't have to think about the implications of it and simply tries to tell herself she's staring because she _wants_ to, and that she can stop whenever she feels like it.

(She knows it's a lie, but it makes her feel better.)

It’s almost hard to look at her like this. She does it subtly of course - not that it matters because Nirasa’s attention is directed to something out of the corner of her vision that Naryu can’t bring herself to care about - but she stares, and it scares her, just a little, because Naryu knows she's been doing it a lot over the years, more and more and more. Oh, she frames it as a game, of course, because Nirasa Sethan is a woman made entirely of _fire_ and _arrogance_ and she doesn't know how to back down from a challenge, can't resist the call of something _fun_.

( _"What's the point of living,"_ She had mentioned once, kicking at Fort Amol's wind-bitten grass boredly with the tip of a toe, throwing a staff across her shoulder and rolling fire through her fingers as easily as she does her stolen coin. _"If you don't do something dangerous every once in a while?"_ )

So when Naryu bats her eyes surreptitiously and really just _looks_ at her, through her eyelashes and biting her bottom lip just so, Nirasa laughs it off with a playful jab to her ribs and makes some jokingly flirtatious comment back. _It's just a game they play_ , Naryu tells herself, _just_ _mindless fun_.

(She doesn't miss the way Nirasa's eyes crinkle at the corners, the way her ash-grey skin darkens just so. There's not much that passes by her, after all - it's her job to notice things, to file away all the little details and mannerisms and habits just in case she needs them for later.

She ignores the way her stomach jumps to her throat for a few seconds at the sight of it, and simply files it away rotely as she does every other little detail.)

That's what she tells herself - Naryu's no stranger to _mindless fun_ , it's a language she's learned to be fluent in, to revel in - but this feels less like a game and more like something _solid_. Naryu doesn't know what that means - what is she, a damn poet? - but looking at Nirasa from across the room, across the space of this cramped little bunker with its wooden furniture and training equipment and Tong paraphernalia shoved wherever they could've possibly found room feels _different_ than the coy, joking glances they threw across bar tables, over the heads of Maulborn lackeys and Stormfist assassins and Fate-Bearers. Five long years of playful glances and joking comments and learning to tolerate each other.

(Nirasa's not looking at her, lost in thought, and Veya's off in the corner, rummaging around in something irritably, taking out some of her anger on whatever it is. Naryu's kind of glad she's escaped their notice, because she's sure the look on her face right now is utterly stupid.)

She's not sure what captures her attention that much - but the paper lantern hung from the ceiling casts a low golden glow over Nirasa's lazy chitin-clad form, shadows gathering in the deep ridges of her armour, in the length of her jaw. She's slumped so much in her high-backed seat that she's about to slide out of it, and Naryu wants to chuckle at the sight because _of course_ Nirasa Sethan, woman who would throw herself over a cliff for the thrill of it, who would challenge a Daedric Prince in the name of vengeance and refuses to wear proper shoes no matter what would _also_ refuse to sit in a chair properly. It's childish of her, but it's oh-so-Nirasa and the mannerism makes something in her chest hurt.

(Naryu's not good at emotions. She won't name what that is, and both of them haven't mentioned that little secret moment at Kvatch.

Probably for the best. She wants to forget but she know she can't, even if her memory weren't perfect.)

Nirasa raises a bone pipe (long and spindly and well-used, judging by the worried teeth marks all over the base) lazily to her lips, oddly pensive, seeing everything and yet nothing at the same time. She inhales deeply, holds the breath for a moment, and then exhales slowly, blowing sickly-sweet smoke out of her mouth in a thin, lazy stream.

(Naryu's not much of a smoker - only when stress coils in her gut like steel and she's feeling just a little bit daring or when she's laying in bed with another face she'll never see again, and even then she prefers the no-nonsense, cloying taste of proper tobacco on her tongue to sickly-sweet, relaxant bugsmoke.

She doesn’t like bugsmoke. Doesn’t like the taste of it, doesn’t like the way it dulls her senses, her reflexes into something warm and fuzzy and drifts her off to sleep. Bugsmoke and its cloying sugar-scent makes her too vulnerable.

But she still wants, in a way, to take that pipe from Nirasa’s hands and bring it to her own mouth, even if she doesn’t like bugsmoke. Nirasa uses it to sleep, to relax when her hands start to shake a little bit too much for her liking, when the whispers behind her ears are a little bit too much without the help of self-medication, and, well, having fun is better with two people, right? That’s what she tells herself, even though Nirasa tries to say it's a purely recreational thing.

She worries - Nirasa doesn’t usually smoke in the middle of the day, keeps it to her bedtime ritual or early in the mornings, sometimes - but Naryu doesn’t really think it’s her place to take that pipe from her hands and ask _what’s wrong_.)

The smoke from her pipe fills the room with a hint of sugar, hanging persistently in the air. Normally Naryu would wrinkle her nose theatrically, hit Nirasa on the back of the head gently and tell her, half-jokingly, to cut that crap out (and Nirasa would tilt her head back, tongue between her teeth and sugar on her lips, and say something _utterly_ salacious in response) but it's something in Nirasa's distracted gaze that stops her from ruining the moment, the little instant of calm in this rapidly devolving situation.

(The thought of Veya, rummaging around angrily somewhere to her left where Naryu cannot see her, sends a prick of ice-cold _guilt_ through her gut. She thinks of happier times but they're all poisoned now.)

She pictures this exact moment, briefly - though she thinks of happier times, happier situations. They're not crammed in a bunker, trying to solve a family mystery with Nirasa slowly falling out of an uncomfortable chair, they're watching the sun rise with a bottle of wine and they're calm and happy and the image makes Naryu's chest hurt because as scared as it makes her she _wants_ that, somehow. Wants the quiet moment where she's not _Naryu Virian, Knower of the Morag Tong_ , but rather _Naryu Virian, Woman Who Can't Put a Name To What She's Feeling But She Thinks She Likes It Probably_.

(But she doesn't think that day will ever come. They're both too fucked up for that - Nirasa's hands shake when she thinks nobody's looking, and she reaches for her pipe when ice crawls oh-so-steadily into her gut. Naryu only sees blood behind her eyes, erects a wall between her skull and the outside world she doesn't know how to overcome, if she even can.

They're both fucked up, perhaps for different reasons and in different ways. But seeing Nirasa lost in thought, oddly pensive, makes her chest _hurt_ in a way she can't explain and she wants it anyway.)

* * *

(Later, Nirasa's blood will mix with Veya's on the cobblestone floor of a Redoran kinhouse, scarlet and gleaming. It will cover Naryu's hands, spilling over her fingers, as she presses them desperately into Nirasa's ripped side, torn into by her angry and damned apprentice.

Desperate and scared - she's _not_ crying, she never cried, no matter what Ashur or the Redoran councilors have to say about it - Naryu will push her shaking lips onto Nirasa's ( _not for the last time_ , she tells herself, pleads, _not for the last time_ ), tasting iron and sugar when she worries her lip in fear.

Nirasa won't remember it, weak and fading and losing as much blood as she was, and Naryu will let the incident die quietly - but that's fine. And when Nirasa returns the favour for the Kvatch incident, leaning against the plaster wall of a canton, smiling, fingers tangling gently in her hair, Naryu will catch the slightest hint of sugar of her lips and half-smile, half-grimace.)

**Author's Note:**

> in other words Nirasa's a stoner
> 
> (Monachopsis: the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place, as maladapted to your surroundings as a seal on a beach—lumbering, clumsy, easily distracted, huddled in the company of other misfits, unable to recognize the ambient roar of your intended habitat, in which you’d be fluidly, brilliantly, effortlessly at home.)


End file.
